Car Photography
My first car photography shoot in Albuquerque, New Mexico was for a new client, Rohana Wheels. I was only contacted by them just last month so I was very excited to already have a shoot for them. My excitement was doubled to get to shoot with a New Mexico background too, although the owner of the car suggested an industrial site, there were still Sandia Mountains in some shots.
Read MoreGoing through my archives this afternoon I found this photo from nearly exactly two years ago made at a charity event. It is of an Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster as twilight was falling over Tampa Bay upon a very impressive and expansive intercoastal estate.
Read MoreSince coming to SW Florida, I have not had a chance to attend a supercar event in over a year. There are not as many here as there were in Tampa Bay. Fortunately, Naples Motorfest 2016 was on a Saturday morning I had free and Dona of Luxe Fashion Group once again allowed me to attend and photograph the exotic cars on display. This allowed me to see for the first time the Lamborghini Aventador SV (above) in a standout blue color with SV graphics on the rear quarterpanel. This car had tremendous presence and was drawing the most attention of any supercar there by far.
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Yellow McLaren 650S Spider at Dimmit Automotive Florida Car Photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseFeatured prominently in the front window of the Dimmitt Automotive showroom in Pinellas Park Florida, this yellow McLaren 650S Spider certainly is an eye catcher. The contrast of the bright yellow paint and black trim on the newly stylized supercar from McLaren looks striking. I was barely able to squeeze in between the car and the window with my Nikon and tripod to be able to make the above shot.
Carbon fiber trim on a yellow McLaren 650S Spider Florida Car Photographer - Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm @ f/2.8 ISO 200 1/15th tripod mounted with cable releaseThere was plenty of carbon fiber trim on the body of the McLaren 650S Spider, including all along the rocker panel as seen in the above image.
Yellow McLaren 650S Spider for sale at Dimmitt Automotive Florida Car Photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseFollow that green exit sign in the window to swing into Dimmitt and part ways with a not unsubstantial amount of cash and you can leave in this yellow McLaren 650S Spider. I think the color and spider body style work well with the Florida gulf coast lifestyle, well, at least once the sun goes down a little bit.
The stylish new front headlights on the McLaren 650S Spider St. Petersburg Car Photography - Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm @ f/2.8 ISO 200 1/30th tripod mounted with cable release
The 650S follows the McLaren 12C which some said was a little boring for an exotic car (I didn't think so). The 650S borrows design elements, like the above McLaren logo shaped headlights, from the P1 hypercar giving it more than enough flash for a midengined supercar to look the part.
Rear quarter panel view of yellow McLaren 650S Spider Florida Car Photography - Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm @ f/2 ISO 200 1/40th tripod mounted with cable release
It is always nice to spend time photographing a supercar. I imagine it as far, far nicer to actually drive one!
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What if you want to photograph a large object, especially in a low light situation, but you only have two speedlights, or even only one? No problem! Here is how you can do it and what you will need.
Photo gear used to photograph the McLaren 650S indoors:
A tripod is a must because you will need to take multiple shots from different angles to properly light the subject, in this case the McLaren 650S supercar. In all I ended up using five photographs to make the one fully lit photograph (below). I lit the front of the car first, then moved the lights around the car (counterclockwise in this case) taking another photograph each time. I even had my assistant hold a speedlight over the top of the car (see top most image). The assistant being in the shot or a lightstand partially being in the shot is no problem at all as the final step takes place at home in Photoshop using layer masks.
In the above photo all 5 shots have been blended together one at a time using layer masks in Photoshop. I started with the shot of the McLaren 650S lit from the front. I then dragged it onto the next photo in the series with the driver's side wheels lit up. I created a layer mask and then revealed the lit wheels photograph underneath, keeping the front lit part from the other photo. I then flattened all layers and repeated this process using the other three photographs. You can see shadows from coming from more than two angles in the above shot because effectively ten speedlights were used to light up the car, not just the two in reality I had for the shoot.
I could have stopped with the 5 shot composite, but I got carried away with removing objects from the background until I finally decided just to remove them all! I started this edit on Saturday night, and finished it on Monday afternoon it took that long and I kept wanting to do more and more to it. I did nothing special to remove the background objects, just simply used the Clone Stamp tool on only carefully selected portions of the photo. Then I removed a lot of the reflections on the car body and cleaned up the floor. The final result was my most advanced photopraph edit in Photoshop to date!
Give this multiple exposure strobist blend layer mask type image a try and let me know the results in the comments below.
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